Daughter's death helps mom educate others on dangers of driving drunk

Published 7:00 pm, Sunday, June 28, 2009

Image 1of/4

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 4

Image 2 of 4

Image 3 of 4

Image 4 of 4

Daughter's death helps mom educate others on dangers of driving drunk

1 / 4

Back to Gallery

Thirteen - to some it's considered an unlucky number. We shy away from Friday the 13th. Elevators skip the thirteenth floors in skyscrapers; many go from row 12 to 14 on planes out of fear for bad luck.

For Debra Linton, 13 was the number of 9-1-1 calls made by concerned motorists reporting a man swerving across the road the night her daughter Kayla Grissom was killed.

Linton stands in front of the Victim Impact Panel on a recent Monday and addressed the group made up of individuals found guilty on charges of DWI, DUI and other alcohol-related incidents who must attend the meetings as part of the punishment.

She tells them about her 18-year-old daughter who loved life. She shows them pictures of the crash scene. She tells them her experience of following her daughter on the highway that late summer night in 2006 and finding her dead minutes later.

She stands proud and tall; her voice doesn't quiver as she replays the story again and again and again as she's done each time since Kayla's death. Her mission now is to educate others from driving drunk and to help save someone else's child's life.

"They just didn't get him off the road in time," Linton says of the man who killed her daughter.

Outside, in front of the Palmer Drug Abuse Program building on Wall Street, a maroon-colored trailer is parked in memory of Kayla. Her wrecked black car is the only thing left from that fateful night. A yellow rose sits on its front seat.

It was the 4th of July and flowers lined the hallways and aisles of the church. The room smelled like a flower shop to those attending Kayla's funeral.

The church was in the process of being remodeled, but still Debra couldn't see holding the service anywhere else. She figured once they had a few flowers and plants brought in it no one would pay attention to the lack of carpet on the floors.

She was right.

But besides the abundance of flowers, there were too many people for the small building. It was standing room only.

A group of Kayla's co-workers from the Midland Dillard's where she worked drove out to Andrews to attend the funeral.

What kind of legacy did she leave after only working there for three months? Debra wondered that when she saw the group, knowing she must've had an impact on them.

On the first day of his trial, Juan Nava - the man who struck Kayla on June 30 - rolled into court in a wheelchair.

Up until the court hearing, he had pled not guilty to the charge of intoxication manslaughter.

When the trial began and the judge asked how he was pleading, he said "guilty."

Debra turned to the prosecuting attorney with a confused look on her face. The prosecutor was just as perplexed.

It was the first anyone was hearing of a confession.

Records showed his blood alcohol concentration was three times the legal limit that night, at .25.

The jury handed down a 20-year prison sentence for intoxicated manslaughter.

They also found he used his vehicle as a deadly weapon. Nava will have to serve at least 10 years in a correctional facility before being eligible for parole.

Her sisters miss her the most. Both younger, they took it hard when they lost Kayla.

Still, they don't like talking about the whole incident, says Debra.

Her biological father works in law enforcement in Odessa. When Debra called him about the accident, he headed to Andrews. He had to pass pieces of the wreckage on his way.

Their lives are forever changed. Kayla's death has left a big hole in the family.

Kayla was a caregiver. When her maternal grandmother needed help dealing with her osteoporosis, Kayla moved in and took to caring for her. Debra believes telling her mom that Kayla died was the single hardest thing she's ever had to do.

She believes the accident didn't kill only her daughter, but her mother as well.

The family believed Kayla had many years left to live. After Kayla's death, her grandmother spent several weeks in the hospital for congestive heart failure. Ten months later, she died at the age of 72. Debra said she grieved herself to death.

The Linton family liked to tease Kayla that she was Anne Shirley, a character Lucy Maud Montgomery first introduced in her 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables.

She's a young girl ophaned at birth with bright red hair and a bubbly yet feisty personality to match. She's hardworking and smart with a cheerful outlook on life and a vivid imagination.

While Kayla had blue eyes and blonde hair and very pale skin, she had Anne's character. Her attitude was as big as Texas.

Still she was sweet, kind and caring. When she was out in public with her mom, she would grab her hand and tell her that she loved her and that she was the best mom in the world.

The two would then walk hand-in-hand as they shopped.

Kayla Grissom was also blossoming. She had just lost five pounds and was excited about the future. She was growing into a confident and capable woman, her family said. They remember how she loved to sing and would sing "Through the Fire" by Jason Crabb.

Before her death, she had planned to marry her boyfriend of less than a year the following March but had called off the wedding. She had told her mom she felt her life was just getting started.

Kayla wanted to see how she could affect the world.

The next month, she and her mom had made plans to go and visit the University of Texas-Permian Basin in Odessa. She had decided she wanted to be an accountant. The two were going to look at options like whether she should live on campus or commute home to Andrews every day.

The night of her death, Kayla met her mother at the Odessa Wal-Mart after she got off work. A recent high school graduate, she held a part-time job as a sales associate in the junior's department at Dillard's.

Her mom had convinced her to stop and help pick up a few things on her way home. She and her two younger sisters were to spend the next day with Debra out on the town for a girls' night.

They wanted to get the groceries out of the way.

As the two stood in the check-out line, they laughed and tried to guess how much the bill was going to be.

When they walked out into the parking lot, Debra looked for her daughter's 1997 Grand Am and noticed the license plate for the first time: W08-NRH.

She started loading the bags into her car, but her daughter stopped her. Kayla wanted a Big Red and a popsicle to eat while driving the 35 minutes home to Andrews.

"I love you. Be careful. See you at home," Debra told her as she handed her the items.

"You too mom," Kayla replied.

It was the last conversation the two would ever have.

Juan Nava was speeding down the four-lane highway drunk, three times over the legal limit.

The 54-year-old double-leg amputee spent three weeks in a coma after the crash and then another few months in the hospital before going to rehab.

Highway 385 was full that June 30 night, with drivers and families returning from games in Odessa, and Nava managed to frighten many with his driving.

Thirteen 9-1-1 calls came into dispatch of a driver on the wrong side of the four-lane highway. Some he passed with his lights on, others with his lights off.

No one will ever know how fast he was going when he hit Kayla. Unofficially, it was over 100 mph. A DPS trooper told Debra he was doing at least that to try to catch up with him.

Before the tragedy, Kayla had pulled out of the Wal-Mart parking lot first and headed home. As Debra left, she looked for Kayla's car. She reached for her cell phone to call her daughter to find out where she was, but then decided against it.

It was nearing 10:30 p.m. and even though the summer sky was clear and the weather hot, the roadway was dark and Debra didn't want her daughter fumbling around with a cell phone while trying to drive.

Heading north on Highway 385, she passed a familiar sign: Andrews, 22 miles.

"A little more than 20 minutes until we're home," Debra thought.

Eleven minutes later, a car next to Kayla pulled off to the right. Something was coming towards them.

Kayla didn't have time to react. She was going 69 mph in the 70 mph zone. She didn't even have time to hit the brakes before the object hit her head on.

Debra saw a haze of orange and white lights in front of her. The sky looked dirty. As she neared the area, she saw red and blue flashing lights. She immediately knew something was wrong.

She was just a few minutes behind her daughter. She grabbed her cell phone and dialed Kayla's number. No answer.

She tried her youngest daughter Brittany.

"Call your sister," she said. "I can't get a hold of her."

Brittany called back a few minutes later.

"I can't get a hold of her either. What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Nothing," Debra said as she drove up to the scene.

She passed the mangled car and something caught her eye that made her sick to her stomach.

"I'll call you back later," she told Brittany.

It was the license plate number on the car: W08-NRH.

The glass crunched under her feet as Debra got out of the car. The night, forever etched in her mind, has a surreal feeling as she tries to recall it.

She took a look at the accident scene and the wreckage. Kayla's car was there with a handicapped van lying next to it on its side.

There was so much metal and glass Debra thought it looked like a bomb had gone off.

A sheriff's deputy stopped her as she started to approach Kayla's vehicle.

"That's my daughter's car," she yelled at the officer.

When she saw it, she somehow instantly knew her daughter was dead. Still, standing less than a foot away, she held her breath trying to listen for any sign of life.

Nothing.

She didn't want Kayla to suffer but still she would have given anything to have heard her say, "Mom, help me!"

But nothing.

Debra watched as paramedics worked to get the driver out of the van. She couldn't understand why no one was working to save Kayla.

A helicopter landed near the crash site to pick up the drunk driver and she watched it, hoping it was for her daughter instead.

"I wish that was for her. I wish they were coming for her," she thought.

Deputies and police finally convinced Debra to leave. They couldn't extract Kayla's body from the car until the family was no longer present. As she got into her car to drive the last 11 miles home, the justice of the peace pulled up to the scene.